Scratch Pad No. 42 Avram Davidson Special Scratchscratch Padpad
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scratch pad no. 42 avram davidson special scratchscratch padpad No. 42, April 2001 Based on *brg* No. 30, a fanzine for ANZAPA, 200th Mailing, and The Great Cosmic Donut of Life No. 28, a fanzine for Acnestis, by Bruce Gillespie, 59 Keele Street, Collingwood, Victoria 3066, Australia. Phone & fax: 61-3-9419-4797. Email: [email protected]. Cover graphic: Richard Dadd: The Fairy Feller's Master-stroke (Tate Gallery). ROUNDING UP THE SHAGGY DOGS: THE SHORT STORIES OF AVRAM DAVIDSON by Bruce Gillespie First given as a talk to the Nova Mob, 7 March 2001, at the coast of America. During this period he published many home of Lucy Sussex and Julian Warner, Brunswick, Mel- short stories and sixteen novels, but never made any money. bourne, Victoria, Australia. That short biography contains the essence of the Avram Davidson legend: that he was an eccentric man who never ‘Avram Davidson? Who’s he?’ That’s been the reaction of made a cent because he wrote quirky stories that make several people when recently I mentioned I would be talking people chuckle. Discountable; not regarded as one of the about his work. The answer is in the anthology, The Avram giants of SF. If such a legend grows up around an author, Davidson Treasury, edited by Robert Silverberg and Grania people stop reading that author, which is what happened to Davis. Reading it set me reading every Avram Davidson Davidson during the seventies and eighties. I also stopped anthology I could find. Thanks, Alan Stewart, for lending me reading him. Therefore, like most other SF readers, I missed some that I did not have. And thanks, Grania Davis, for the out on the fact that year by year Davidson’s work kept energy you have invested in recent years into revealing the improving. Some of his very best stories were written just range of Avram Davidson’s work. before he died. Avram Davidson was born in 1923 in Yonkers, New York, It was not until I read the Avram Davidson Treasury that I and died in 1993 in Bellingham, Washington, in poverty. He gained any idea of the complex reality of Davidson’s life and was in the US Navy during World War II, and on his way the true worth of his work. The Treasury is a particularly home visited China and, later, Israel during 1949, the year valuable resource, because of the care taken in its selection of its birth. He had returned to America by 1950. Beginning of stories and the range of writers chosen to comment on in his late teens, he became a strict Orthodox observer of the individual pieces. In his Foreword, here is co-editor Robert Jewish faith, and his early stories appeared in magazines, Silverberg’s recollection: such as Jewish Life and Commentary, primarily directed at Jewish audiences. In 1954 he sold his first genre fantasy or Even though Avram had seemed to materialize among us science fiction story, ‘My Boy Friend’s Name Is Jello’, to The like a stranger from another world, there in the mid- Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and in 1958 made his 1950s, it turned out that he was in fact a New Yorker like name with a story called ‘The Golem’, also in F&SF. This tells the rest of us . Indeed he had been active in New York of an elderly couple, sitting outside their suburban home, science-fiction fandom in his teens — co-founder, no who are approached by a golem. They do what anybody less, of the Yonkers Science Fiction League. (I find the would do: wrote on the golem’s forehead and set him to concept of a teenage Avram Davidson as difficult to work mowing the lawns. Davidson’s other enduring suc- comprehend as the concept of the Yonkers Science Fic- cesses from that period include ‘Help! I Am Dr Morris tion League, but so be it.) . Goldpepper’ (1957), which tells of a dentist captured by aliens who force him to fit them with upper plates so they Born in 1923 — that means he was only thirty-five or so can move to America and claim welfare, and ‘Or All the Seas when I first met him at that unspecified party at an with Oysters’ (1958), which is based on the wonderful notion indeterminable time in the late 1950s. Which is hard to that safety pins are the pupae and coat hangers the larvae of believe now, because I think of thirty-five-year-olds these bicycles. In his introduction to the story in The Avram David- days as barely postgraduate, and Avram, circa 1958, son Treasury, Guy Davenport tells of students in his writing bearded and rotund and professorial, seemed to be at classes who have handed him garbled versions of the same least sixty years old . idea, not knowing where it has come from. Not many SF So we clustered around this curious little man at our stories become urban legends. parties and got to know him, and when his stories ap- Davidson led a restless life, constantly trying to find a peared we bought the magazines that contained them house cheap enough to fit his income, or other sources of and read them; and our appreciation, and even love, for income to finance his writing career. From 1962 and 1964 his work and for him knew no bounds. He was courtly he worked as by far the most interesting editor that The and droll. He was witty. He was lovable. He could be, to Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has ever had. While he be sure, a little odd and cranky at times (though not was editor, his introductions would sometimes grow longer nearly as much as he would come to be, decades later, in than the stories they were meant to introduce. As editor of his eccentric and cantankerous old age), but we under- F&SF, his most memorable achievement was publishing stood that geniuses were entitled to be odd and cranky. Roger Zelazny’s first hit story, ‘A Rose for Ecclesiastes’, accompanied by the finest SF magazine cover ever, by Here Silverberg gives me the clue to all of Davidson’s Hannes Bok. During this period he was living in a village in work — that he was born old and wise, except in aspects of Mexico. All the paperwork involved in editing F&SF was at his personal life. But that’s not quite the impression he gave the mercy of the Mexican and US post offices. Later, David- when his stories first became well known among SF fans. son lived for a while in British Honduras, now called Belize, Because of the success of such stories as ‘The Golem’ and before moving in and out of rooming houses all over the west ‘Dr Morris Goldpepper’, he was regarded as an oddball 3 genius, rather than a real genius. His oddest stories are his well. He complained he had his own troubles, foot trou- earliest, and their eccentricity often made it difficult for bles . I scarcely listened, just chattered . Toes . readers to see their brilliance. In the late fifties and early something about his toes. Swollen, three of them, quite sixties, he really hoped to sell enough fiction to become a painful. A bell tinkled in my brain. I asked him how he success in the field, so he wrote too many stories of the wrong spelt his name. A-j-e-l-l-o. Curious, I never thought of that. sort. Many of his published pieces of that era were six-page Now, I wonder what he could have done to offend the sting-in-the-tail stories, clever but unmemorable. little girls? Chased them from in front of his store, per- haps. There is a distinct reddish spot on his nose. By If we want to judge the true ability of Avram Davidson, we tomorrow he will have an American Beauty of a pimple. can start at the beginning of his career. Take his first fantasy story, ‘My Boy Friend’s Name Is Jello’, published in F&SF. All those shaggy dogs, the themes, are starting to be Its first paragraph is Joycean stream-of-consciousness writ- mustered. As this happens, they are becoming part of one ing, not at all the sort of thing one finds in SF magazines of theme. The narrator lying in bed works out that the girls the early fifties. A man is suffering from a disease, which he outside are junior sorceresses. One of their other calling calls Virus Y. We have no idea who he is, where he is living, games blesses a boy friend named Tony, ‘who eats macaroni, how he caught whatever he caught. ‘Oh dear, how my mind has a great big knife and a pretty little wife, and will always runs on. I must be feverish. An ague, no doubt.’ lead a happy life . that must be the butcher opposite; he’s The second paragraph begins: ‘Well, rather an ague than always kind to the children.’ a pox. A pox is something one wishes on editors . strange The narrator is a sensible chap. He takes out two dimes breed, editors.’ The story has switched direction entirely. and flings them out the window. He thinks: Will the story be about sickness or editors? The third paragraph begins: Too bad about Ajello, but every man for himself. Listen to them singing away, bless their little hearts! I love little ‘In front of the house two little girls are playing one of girls. Such sweet, innocent voices.